DVD plays OK one day, not the next

dpvollmer wrote on 4/10/2007, 9:54 AM

I used Vegas 6 and DVD Architect 4 to create and burn a single movie DVD. It played fine during choir practice but when playing it in the same player 2 weeks later just before our Good Friday service, it hung up and eventually skipped to another chapter.

I have burned several other DVDs using the same content but eliminated most of the chapters. At some point each one hung up but not always at the same place.

Other shorter, less involved projects have had the same problem but usually I can just burn another DVD and it is OK.

I have tried several DVD players and used a lens cleaner in two of them. I tried two different brands of media.

Fortunately I also copied the project to tape and ended up having to use my mini DV camcorder as my player for the performance. A couple of brief picture and sound glitches but at least it didn't hang up.

What do you think is causing the hang up? Why would a DVD play fine one day and not the next using the same player?

Thanks for your suggestions,
David

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 4/10/2007, 10:04 AM

If the quality of the burn is marginal, it may not play all the way through. Slight changes in temperature might cause the player to read the disc slightly differently, resulting in playback one time, but not the other. What brand DVD blank are you using? Is it DVD+R or DVD-R? I would suggest trying another burn using Taiyo Yuden premium discs purchased from Meritline or Supermediastore. Verbatim also makes good discs.

The fact that you have had the problem more than once definitely points to a problem either with the player (it could be failing) or the media.

If you have a computer with a DVD drive, put the "bad" disc in that drive and use the "Disc Quality" test in Nero DVD Speed (free download) to test the quality of the disc.

dpvollmer wrote on 4/10/2007, 10:50 AM

Thank you johnmeyer,

I purchased the DVDs last year for a senior video I was doing. They are not branded and a printable. So was the other DVD brand I used. I usually purchase from either Meritline or Supermediastore and never buy the cheap stuff.

Since I used three different players it is most likely not a player problem. I wonder if it could be a burner problem (dual processor HP PC with Lightscribe burner) purchased last November or December.

Should I purchase an external burner (and which one) and use another software application to burn the DVDs after creating the files in DVDA?

I will do the "Disc Quality" test you recommended this evening.

MPM wrote on 4/12/2007, 11:10 PM

If it helps, there's loads of very specific info online at places like videohelp. doom9.org, & cdfreaks.

In a nutshell IMHO & FWIW, brand or price is almost irrelevant -- it's the manufacturer that matters, & you'll see the brands john mentioned frequently recommended. There is software available to check the manufacture code, which is almost the only way to do a good comparison, follow online recommendations etc.

You'll also find that age can matter -- there are lots of reports of discs not aging gracefully, and burned or not, yours might be getting old enough for problems to crop up if they're poor quality.

DVD players age too, and as they do, find burned discs more difficult to read. It would not be outside the realm of possibility that all 3 players have *tired* lasers.

Likewise your burner can get tired as well, but this would seem too soon -- might definitely try Nero Speed as john suggested, and look up how to interpret results online.. Usually you'll get better results burning at lower speeds. Rather than buy an external burner, I'd ask why not stick in another internal, as they go for ~$30 is all. For which one, check reviews & track down reports from the VSO database. Personally I like LG.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/13/2007, 9:36 AM

FWIW, last night I once again tried to play this disc that contains seven episodes of a favorite TV program that someone else burned and gave me. The audio kept going out, but would sometimes play if we "rewound" and played the same segment again. The whole family quickly got tired of the problem, so I told them to wait while I went upstairs to the computer and simply made a copy onto a DVD+RW disc.

Everything played perfectly after that.

[Edit]

Further testing didn't reveal any bad read errors on the disc (on my computer, of course, not on the set-top player). I then looked at the content and found that the audio was MPEG audio. This could very easily be the issue, and made me think about player compatibility issues I used to have before I switched to DVDA. The original low-end consumer authoring program I used initially only allowed MPEG audio. Perhaps this causes some of the problems. GSpot will tell you what you have.

[Edit]

I just went back to look at the disc ID of the lousy media. Wow, I've never seen this before. There is no manufacturing ID whatsoever.